Where people are in focus

Where people are in focus

Center for Digital Neurotechnologies presents three new research projects.

Virtual medical visits, artificial intelligence in the operating room and the remedy for motion sickness in self-driving vehicles – which sounds like a dream of the future, will soon be turned into reality. The researchers at the Center for Digital Neurotechnologies Saar (CDNS) in Homburg are currently working on this. The center, which was founded at the beginning of the year in cooperation between htw saar, the University of Saarland and the Center for Mechatronics and Automation Technology (ZeMA), brings together neuroscience, computer science and the Saar economy to help people with the help of the latest technologies.

These human-centered technologies are also mentioned when the CDNS presents its three new research projects on 14 October 2022. The interdisciplinary projects are funded with around five million euros by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Saar industry, the European Regional Development Fund and the state. Jürgen Barke, Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digital Affairs and Energy, also took a look at the centre on this day.

"You will see here today at the Centre for Digital Neurotechnologies Saar how the different fields – computer science, engineering and medicine – come together to help us, the people, to help the patients", welcomed Prof. Dr. Dr. Daniel Strauss, neuroscientist and one of the CDNS spokespersons, Minister Barke and the guests. In the projects, the Saar economy was also brought on board. Above all, interdisciplinary networking is an important driver for the success of the projects. For example, researchers from htw saar, the University of Saarland, the University Hospital Homburg and the Center for Mechatronics and Automation Technology (ZeMA) work hand in hand at the Center for Digital Neurotechnologies Saar.

But where does the CDNS actually start? “We want to advance human-centric digital technologies, from smartphones to self-driving cars, through neurotechnological, neuroscientific research. In the fields of biomedicine, human-machine interaction and sensory immersion", says Strauss.

"What excites me most is the continuous scientific development capability", said Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dieter Leonhard, President of htw saar. “I believe that the topic of digital neurotechnologies is a mega-topic for us: We are an ageing society, we will need cooperative robotics and support assistance systems – that always sounds so threatening, that's why I'm happy about this message: Medicine helps – there is no need to explain this to anyone. That's why as an engineer, I'm glad we can send this message: Technology helps people", says Leonhard.

The fact that technology helps can easily be seen in the ‘Multi-Immerse’ project. Presented as an ‘extremely important project for paediatrics’, it is intended to enable seriously ill children and adolescents to make virtual visits to relatives at Saarland University Hospital. This is not just about video conversations, but about a realistic representation of a visit to the hospital bed. Patients should be able to see, hear and feel their parents and siblings through new technologies. This is achieved through so-called immersive technologies, with which both groups of people can immerse themselves in a virtual world and still feel intense closeness spatially separated. Researchers from the fields of medicine and computer science at Saarland University, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and ZeMA (Prof. Dr. Martina Lehser and Prof. Dr. Paul Motzki) are involved in this project.

The second project ‘Digital Scrubs’ also closely links medicine and computer science, and several companies from Saarland and Berlin come into play. The location of the research project is the operating room equipped with a lot of high-tech, which demands a lot of attention from the operating teams. Here, too, new technologies should help to address all the senses of the persons involved and enable them to communicate with each other and with the instruments in the operating room via speech, gesture control and haptic feedback, such as sensors in clothing. Artificial intelligence will also be used to respond individually to the cognitive and emotional state of the medical team, such as the respective attention span. In addition to medical professors from the university and htw saar professor Dr. Martina Lehser at ZeMA, the St. Ingbert company abat+ GmbH, Paragon Semvox GmbH in Kirkel and the nexus Institute for Cooperation Management GmbH in Berlin are involved.

The third project, ‘Kinesymbiosis’, is dedicated to a topic that the project team has been researching for some time in Saarland, but for which more workable solutions are still being sought. This is about the automobile, which is no longer just a means of transport due to increasing automation, but has become a highly networked working and living space. However, many users have the problem that they get nauseous when they want to work on the screen while driving, watch videos or talk to the passengers in the opposite direction of travel. This kinetosis or motion sickness is caused by the fact that the visual information does not correspond to the experienced movements of the vehicle.

An international team of researchers consisting of neurotechnologists, computer scientists, psychologists and doctors as well as vehicle and mobility researchers has been investigating for two years how these reactions of the nervous system can be measured. Until now, this was only possible through direct contact with human skin. The researchers now want to try to cover this with non-contact sensors. In addition to the scientists from htw saar and the university, the companies ZF AG, Paragon SemVox GmbH and Traffic Technology Services Europe GmbH are involved in the project.